


Toxic (or: Riza Hawkeye struggles with herself)

by sarthij



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, and roy, how riza interacts with her closest confidants, imo those people are rebecca, started writing this after all the discourse about riza hawkeye, will additionally focus on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-29 21:44:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7700833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarthij/pseuds/sarthij
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riza Hawkeye is fifteen years old when she first considers hurting herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 15

Riza Hawkeye is fifteen years old when she first considers hurting herself.

Her back aches with the new outline of a crimson inscription. She can still feel the needle that had continuously impaled itself in her and smothering her face in a downy pillow and remembering the way her father's hands shook as he desecrated her body with his research. She knows it wasn't guilt that caused the tremors in her father's hands but the anxiety of botching the transcription. She feels rage build up in the back of her throat and she wants to fucking _scream_ because, despite the disrespect that her father has shown her and despite the abuse and the neglect, she wants him to love her.

Riza doubts he is even capable of acknowledging her beyond simple commands or requests. The only time he had ever shown concern for her, the only time he had ever seemed to care was when she was 13 and had cut her hand open, accidentally, when peeling vegetables for dinner. She had jolted in surprise and stumbled back into a pot, creating a clangor of metal utensils. Her father had rushed into the room, eyes more awake than she had ever seen them, and helped her care for her wounds.

His touch had been gentle, whispering words of comfort to her.

_It'll be okay Riza._

_Don't worry my child._

_It's just a cut._

_Be still sweetheart._

Alone in her room, her back throbbing with pain, Riza wonders what she'll have to do to incite such a response once more. She doubts cutting herself and dropping pans would rouse him this time. She would need to do something more drastic.

_BAM_

Riza wheels around, startled, and realizes that the wind outside had caused her room's window to slam open. She pauses, watching the hinged window swing. Slowly, she gets off her bed and steps up to the window. The Hawkeye Estate was slowly degrading into squalor, but it was still large and she was on the second story of the house. Falling from this height would not kill her, but it would hurt.

 _Good_ , she thinks, _if I hurt I'll scream. He'll hear those screams. Father will hear._

She opens the window completely, stares down onto at the ground far below. Her heart beats fast but she knows this will work. She needs her father to know how much she hurts, she needs him to care and _fuck_ she just wants him to-

"Ms. Hawkeye?"

Riza startles so badly that she almost falls, but Mr. Mustang's hand grabs her wrist before she tips down.

"What the hell are you _doing?_ " Mr. Mustang's eyebrows are scrunched with worry and his hand is still tightly clenched on her wrist. "Ms. Hawkeye you could have fallen!"

"Mr. Mustang, ow." Riza pointedly stares at his offending hand.

Mr. Mustang completely blanches and releases her wrist like it burned him. "Oh my God- I'm- Ms. Hawkeye I'm so sorry. I was just –startled? That's not a good enough excuse um, I just. Oh my God, are you okay? Does your wrist hurt? I thought you were going to fall out of the window!"

"Mr. Mustang, I'm okay. You didn't hurt me, I'm fine." She smiles tightly and glances at the floor.

"Please, it's Roy." He smiles in an obnoxiously charming way and, suddenly, she feels warmth creep up her neck instead of the constricting grief she had previously experienced. "Now, really Ms. Hawkeye, what in Amestris' name were you trying to see outside the window? Must 'a been really interesting for you to crane your head that far." He laughs and the heat on her neck burns.

She raises her head to meet him eye to eye, squints at him. "Why did you burst into my room? Did you even knock?"

His charming smile falters into a sheepish cringe. "I did knock! You just didn't respond, so I- I just wanted to ask when dinner was and –"

Riza snorts. It was quite uncanny, his timing. "Okay, Mr. Mustang. In the future, please refrain from such callous actions when you're hungry."

"Callous?! I saved you! You would definitely have fallen!" His face was growing red with indignation. She found it endearing, somehow.

"Go downstairs. I'll start dinner in ten minutes." She realizes her voice is probably more dismissive than she means for it to be and she feels regret when Mr. Mustang's comical indignation fades into a rueful smile.

"Ah- Thanks, Ms. Hawkeye." He turns around resolutely and starts to head for the door and Riza is suddenly overcome by the urge to stop him.

"R-Roy!" She chokes on his name at first, surprised at herself.

He spins back around. Looks at her questioningly.

"Thank you! For saving me," she sputters. "Even if you hurt my wrist!" She tries to smile broadly at him, but she worries the gesture is still a little meek.

Roy seems to turn a little red. He looks away from her and scratches his neck. "No problem, Ms. Hawkeye," he smiles lightly before turning back around and hurrying out of the room.

She stares after him for a second, then looks back at the open window. Roy's abrupt presence definitely distracted her from her dangerous decision.

Looking back, the decision to jump out of her window didn't feel as appealing as it had just minutes ago. Had her dismay really make her consider such a drastic measure?

_How could I have been so foolish?_

_\---_

She makes her way down the stairs, towards the kitchen. Her father's study is ajar and, looking in, she can see sofa she had laid upon, topless. She can see the drawer that holds the needle and ink that had settled into her skin. She can see the pillow she had bitten into when trying not to cry out as her father marred her skin. She can see her father, looking dead to the world, pouring over a transcript.

"Father, do you want me to bring you dinner?"

He did not reply. She closes her eyes and pinches her arm to abate the angry frustration boiling inside of her. She would just bring him dinner later, when she and Mr. Mustang had finished eating. He was not likely to realize the tardiness of the meal.

She closes the door and continues to the kitchen.

"Ms. Hawkeye, I took care of this for you!"

Mr. Mustang hands her a bowls of freshly skinned and boiled potatoes, seeming very pleased with himself and hopeful for praise.

"You- I mean- this is very considerate of you, Mr. Mustang."

He laughs and turns pink. "I thought you were finally calling me Roy! It was no problem. I felt bad about disturbing you just because I was hungry."

Riza smiles fondly, "Well, that _was_ quite rude. I, however, think a bushel of flawlessly peeled potatoes are an impeccable penance. You're lucky I'm so forgiving, others might find an offense like yours equivalent to a punishment more severe than peeling some potatoes."

Roy chuckles. "Well, as an alchemist, I'm quite the expert with equivalence. You'll be pleased to know that I have judged this exchange to be entirely equal," he finished with a genuine smile.

"Thanks, I would hate to be conned out of more of your delightful service."

Riza takes the potatoes from him and places them on the table, pouring them into a larger bowl.

"I think today is a mashed potato kind of day, don't you Mr. Mustang?" She asks, wielding a spoon to begin the task of smashing the vegetables.

"I have never had a stronger feeling about potatoes and days, Ms. Hawkeye."

She smiles. "If you're so adamant about me calling your Roy, you should call me Riza. On principle."

Roy snorts, "No way! Your father would skin me alive if he heard me!"

"Hardly. Mr. Mustang, my father would never take note of what you call me. I doubt my father would even notice if I _had_ fallen out of that window."

"Come on Ms. Hawkeye, that can't be true."

Riza shrugs. "Maybe, maybe not. Now shush for a second, I'm trying to make _you_ dinner."


	2. 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the battle rages on.

                Riza felt a trickle of blood slide down onto her chin. She sighed, touching her chapped, bleeding lip with her fingers, trying to staunch the flow. Shaking the flagon of water she had snatched before venturing to her sniper tower, Riza listened closely to the sloshing inside of the flask, only discerning a half cup of water left. Chapped lips were a product of dehydration, dehydration was a product of limited water, and limited water was a product of waging a war in the middle of a _god damn_ desert.

                Riza Hawkeye had been stationed in Ishval for four months.

                “Four months in Hell,” she murmured to herself. _(And she was, by now, convinced that, if Hell existed, then it was here, among the bodies and the stench.)_

She shot a kid today. _(His brains and body had fallen to the ground, as lifeless and bloody as the cheap meat she used to buy from the butcher shop for her father.)_ A woman, unaware of her perch at the top of the tower, had collected his body. A frantic mother had pressed her hand to his mouth _(checking for breath)_ , his neck, his wrist _(searching for a pulse)_ , before gathering the boy up in her arms, tears pouring down her face, screeching loudly enough to grasp the attention of the fighters waging war a mile away.

                Riza had killed The Kid mindlessly, ruthlessly, like he was an animal, a vicious being, something dangerous. She’d been downing insurgents that had crept into the now Amestrian-held territory since she’d _been_ in Ishval.

                As she’d killed man after man after man, she’d told herself, and been told, that these people posed a threat to the safety of her fellow soldiers. She’d believed it, shamefully, until she’d taken a good look at the bloody, fresh corpse of a boy who couldn’t be more than 13.

                _(Through her binoculars, she could see the neat, red hole in his head.)_

                She’d been violently, unendingly ill on herself. She’d not had much to eat in the last 24 hours, but bile happily accompanied any solids she violently expelled.

                .

                She watched, shell-shocked, as the woman picked up the remains of her boy _(skull fragment here, flesh here, blood smeared across this rock)_. She could see the woman softly speaking to her son, cradling his cheek on hers.

                Riza called it mercy when she shot the woman, but she knew it was her own cowardice, her inability to watch the grief of an anguished mother.

                .

                _(When she lays in her bunk that night, bombings and gunfire fading in and out of her dreams, she begins to wonder whether the others she had killed were insurgents. She could have been killing innocents this whole time and the only thing that told her differently were her commanders and her dying flame of patriotism.)_

_._

_(When she does dream, it’s of soft bedsheets covering her body and face, warm with her heat and the heat of another. She looks to her right and there is the smiling face of Roy Mustang, their world limited to bed they shared. His fingers trace patterns into her back and he whispers something into her ear._

_She can’t understand what he’s saying, soft as he’s speaking, and there’s a roaring coming from the outside of their cocoon._

_He keeps mumbling softly into her ear, leaning on her, smothering her bit-by-bit. She begins to feel warm, then hot, then she’s wriggling underneath his form because she can feel her skin_ burning _. She can’t breathe, she tries harder to buck free, but he tightens his grip on her back, piercing her skin incrementally._

_She hears it then, what he’s now frantically whispering._

_As the bedsheets give way to what she now knows are flames penetrating their haven, she understands him._

_”MurdererMurdererMurdererMurdererMurderMURDERERMURDERER.”)_

_._

                Riza decided to kill herself in the morning.

                She delayed, once she was in her nest, her death till the mid-afternoon, trying to decide between shooting herself and falling to her death.

                She wondered, idly, if she was stalling because she’s a coward or because she was too enraptured by the masochistic pleasure of considering her own demise.

                (Later, she’s sure the only reason she doesn’t do either is the sight of an old friend on the battlefield, spotted through the scope of her sniper’s lense.

                She’d almost pulled the trigger on Roy, right after the man who’d almost stabbed him.

She almost wished she had.)

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, didn't have much to say. Warning: it's pretty graphic.

**Author's Note:**

> the next chapter will also have mustang in it again, then rebecca. also I don't actually think riza is being foolish or weak in her struggles with mental health. As someone who has struggled with such thoughts myself I think her issues are important and make her character more complex and strong willed. but after almost every suicidal event she has in the manga, she usually curses herself for being weak/foolish. just tryna stay consistent


End file.
